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The Lockhorns, 1/7/10

Today’s Lockhorns is particularly rich in the delightful seething contempt that keeps me coming back day after day. As if the naked animosity on the principals’ faces weren’t enough to bring joy to fans of marital misanthropy everywhere, we also have the fork jabbed into Leroy’s pile of undifferentiated food-like matter to amuse us. While it’s easy to imagine Leroy leaving it there sticking upwards to serve as a sort of visual confirmation of his complaints about the meal’s unappetizing physical qualities, the angle of the utensil, with its handle pointing away from him, implies that it was actually Loretta who put it there. Perhaps she initially appeared to thrust the fork at Leroy’s doughy torso, before changing her angle of attack at the last minute and leaving it in the home-cooked meal her husband is unable to appreciate! I also note that the configuration of the Lockhorns’ dining area seems to have changed, with Loretta’s seat being replaced by a portal to some kind of ecru nothingness, into which she can stalk when inevitably provoked.

Curtis, 1/7/10

I was about to rag on this year’s Curtis Kwanzaa storyline for its less-than-lunatic plotting and all-too-zen ending when I got to today’s final panel and found out that the whole thing was actually a touching tribute to a late friend of cartoonist Ray Billingsley. So, uh, thanks a lot, Mr. Billingsley, for making me feel even more like a petty jerk than I usually do. You’ve left me with nothing to do except point out that panel two’s depiction of an adorable bunny sleeping on the back of a contented hippo is quite charming.

Mark Trail, 1/7/10

Anyway, I certainly hope that nobody involved in the production on Mark Trail is dying inside due to neglect from his or her spouse, because I’m sure as hell going to make fun of that. Today’s exchange shows that each of the Trails has their role in this terrible dysfunctional marriage down pat, with Mark openly acknowledging that leaving his wife in a desert of emotional emptiness is just what he does!

Like a sonnet, each Mark Trail storyline is built out of a strictly defined series of components, and each story must begin with Cherry being ritually humiliated. First, she herself becomes the unwitting agent of her own loneliness. Why did she even tell Mark about that phone call, when she must have known it would lead to his almost immediate departure? In truth, she had no real choice in the matter, being driven on by her universe’s remorseless narrative logic. Compare her dialogue in that earlier strip to one from several years ago, as acted out by my lovely wife in our production of Mark Trail Theater. Amber read Tuesday’s dialogue out in her best Cherry Trail voice, and the echo was uncanny. Today, Cherry completes her debasement by launching a desperate and doomed sex advance at her husband. In panel three, Mark is closing his eyes and holding absolutely still, in the hope that Cherry will eventually lose interest and go away.

Beetle Bailey, 1/7/10

Meanwhile, Beetle Bailey grows less circumspect by the day, with Beetle no longer willing to pretend that Sarge’s elaborate exercise instructions have any purpose other than to get the young private out of his uniform trousers.

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Oh my goodness, the site’s been all rearranged! More information about the redesign can be found on the Internet.

Curtis, 1/4/10

Oh, right, Kwanzaa! If there’s one thing that keeps me from viewing the purchase of a new calendar as just another step on the ever-descending spiral towards death, it’s the annual Curtis Kwanzaa fable of hallucinatory madness. I generally tear through the first half of the tale with joy when I return from my Christmas travels. Past adventures have included:

• The trials of six-fingered piano players
• Terrifying bat-winged bears
• Giant telepathic otters (still the gold standard, to my mind)
• Talking two-headed snakes
• Greedy maidens vomiting out various creepy-crawleys

This year’s story, involving nightmarish soul-stealing shadow-things, talking, styled animals, and all-knowing rhythm instruments, while whimsical and awesome when measured by other yardsticks, is thus rather pedestrian by when viewed in the Curtis Kwanzaa context. Still, today our hero appears to be passing through a magic mirror into the realm of the dead, so perhaps things might be looking up. I’d also like to point out that his sentient animal friends can speak and think like humans but, since they cannot enter the spirit realm, apparently do not have souls, which to my mind makes them by far the creepiest part of this whole drama so far.

Pluggers, 1/4/10

Speaking of monstrous, soulless beasts, let’s check in with Pluggers! Let’s see, yep, same old same old, pluggers are casting their minds back to a bygone age and … finding it … wanting? OH MY GOD EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG! Is 2010 the year pluggers finally get with the times? What’s next? “Pluggers will suffer a witch to live”? MADNESS!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/4/10

This strip would be funny (well, OK, not funny per se, but at least not so unsettling) if Ol’ Lukey were laffin’ it up with his fellow rustics in the second panel, rather than just sort of staring off into space looking befuddled and a little frightened. As it is, it appears that this elderly hillbilly is falling into corn likker-accelerated dementia, unable to remember where he’s going and why at any given moment. Soon he’ll be receiving Hootin’ Holler’s version of elder care (e.g., abandonment on a rocky hillside to be eaten by grizzlies).

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Curtis, 12/21/09

IS NOTHING SAFE FROM THIS BLASTED RECESSION? The one thing that has kept all of America going in this blighted recessionary wasteland was the knowledge that, if we could just make it to December 26, we would have the annual Curtis Kwanzaa Fable to enjoy. But now we learn that this year’s tale won’t involve awesome drug-induced mayhem like giant telepathic otters and bat-winged bears, but will instead merely consist of the last few employed Americans being hit up for money.

Slylock Fox, 12/21/09

Let us pass over today’s sordid crime with only a passing nod of approbation for the perp’s amphibian insouciance, and instead focus on the TERRIFYING DEVIL-THING casually trying on shoes. Those ears aren’t shaped properly for her to be a fox or even the demon Queen of the animal hell Slylock inhabits; I must therefore assume that she’s some kind of lesser Dark Angel, trying on some spiky heels for grinding into the faces of damned souls down in her subterranean punishment realm.

The Phantom, 12/21/09

As a longstanding fan of the Phantom’s saucy narration boxes, I’m bit unsettled to learn that our host for the strip is actually an aged, bloated Billy Dee Williams, so desperate for work that he’s willing to cram an ascot into his collar and spout cheeky nonsense.

Gil Thorp, 12/21/09

Wait … but .. basketball? Milford sports tend to be more or less mutually exclusive, so this seems to indicate that football season is over. But wasn’t the football team actually kind of good this year? What about the playdowns? It bothers me that I’m more tuned in to the championship picture in the Valley Conference than I am to the fortunes of any of the real-life NFL teams for whom I ostensibly root.

And what about Duncan Daley’s simmering drunken rage? I certainly hope that he interrupts Milford’s first game by wandering onto the court, confused and belligerent, with that case of beer still hoisted on his shoulders.

Mary Worth, 12/21/09

Thank goodness the creators of Mary Worth finally realized that America simply couldn’t take any more strips featuring Wilbur typing in front of his computer; any more excitement along those lines and there would have been riots in the street. Today’s strip is still pretty good though, with Adrian and Dr. Jeff making goofy facial expressions and hand gestures (what’s Adrian playing peek-a-boo with, I’d like to know), and Mary disregarding basic kitchen safety by attempting to simultaneously open the oven and lean over the pot on the front burner (with its handle sticking out into the walkway, no less!) to stir whatever’s boiling in the back. In other words, while Wilbur is eating lonely white-bread sandwiches and agonizing over his past mistakes, the Corey Clan has been helping themselves to the “medicinal” pot brownies someone brought Scott.

Apartment 3-G, 12/21/09

Every once in a while, the characters in Apartment 3-G talk like actual New Yorkers. For instance, it makes total sense that a proud Manhattanite like the Professor would bobble his head in shock as he blurted out “Ruby has friends in Queens?!” I’m assuming he’s emphasizing that last phrase just as he would if he were saying “…on Mars?!” or “…in hell?!”